Universe Has No Direction: You Are Not Alone In Feeling Directionless In Life

A cosmic radiation study recently showed that the universe is aimless in its expansion. The sentence basically implies that the universe is directionless, a state that most humans can also perhaps identify with. One of the earliest background radiation, remnants of the Big Bang, reportedly shows that though the universe is expanding, there is no set plan, aim, goal or direction for its expansion.

Researchers from UK's Imperial College and University College London recently conducted a study that observed cosmic microwave background (CMB), the relic radiation from the Big Bang, to examine the Copernican principle - particularly the fundamental assumption in cosmology's standard model. The principle says that the universe is isotropic and shows homogeneity at a large scale level, i.e., the universe is the same, irrespective of the angle that you look at it from, similar to a simulation or hologram - a universe model of which was used to test the Copernican principle.

The scientists used the European Space Agency's (ESA) Planck spacecraft to take measurements of CMB. The aim was not to look for radiation imbalances but see the various ways in which preferred directions would mark their impact on the CMB. A supercomputer was used to find any hidden pattern, including expansion at different speeds on various axes or rotation around a specific axis. The fact that gravitational waves could have compressed or stretched the early universe in certain directions was also kept in mind. Incidentally, the researching team selected five modes to indicate a special direction.

Based on the observation, it was noticed that the CMB showed no distinct patterns, which implied that the universe is indeed isotropic, because if it had been anisotropic then distinct patterns would have been present. "We find overwhelming evidence against deviations from isotropy, placing simultaneous upper limits on all modes for the first time, and improving Planck constraints on vorticity by an order of magnitude," the researchers said. The team estimated one among 121,000 chances of there being a preferred direction in the universe, which backs the theory that the universe is isotropic.